Dr. F. Benjamin Zhan (Chinese name: 湛飞并) is professor of geography and founding director of the Texas Center for Geographic Information Science in the Department of Geography at Texas State University-San Marcos.  He also holds a Chang Jiang Scholar Guest Chair Professorship at Wuhan University in China.

Ben joined the faculty of the Texas State Department of Geography in 1995.  His major research interests are in Earth and Space Information Science and Technology as well as their applications, including: (1) (visual) spatial analysis and modeling, (2) health and the environment, (3) transportation and network science, and (4) hazards research and risk analysis. He seeks to develop new analytical, modeling, and computational methods for analyzing, exploring, and visualizing geospatial data and information. In addition, Ben applies these methods to achieve a better understanding about the relations between human health and the environment (broadly defined), to discover new knowledge about transportation and network systems in geographic space, and to deepen/widen the understanding about hazards and hence improve decision-making related to emergency planning and crisis management. 

Ben has written or co-authored more than 100 professional papers that have been published in a wide array of outlets.  Ben's top five most referenced articles have been cited by researchers in more than 35 countries (based on information from Thomson Scientific ISI Web of Knowledge and Google Scholar).  You may find more information about Ben's work in his brief biography or his 2-page CV.  Ben has provided a brief information page for those of you who want to have additional information about his work on shortest path algorithms. 

Professor Zhan has served as major advisor of more than 35 Ph.D. and master’s students. His Ph.D. students secured tenure-track faculty positions and  research positions in U. S. universities, government agencies, and leading GIS companies. One of Ben's Ph.D. students, Dr. Xuwei Chen, won the 2007 J. Warren Nystrom Dissertation Award (best dissertation award) in the 2007 Nystrom Award Competition organized by the Association of American Geographers (AAG) for dissertations completed from 1 April 2005 to 15 September 2006.  If you are interested in the Ph.D. program in GIScience at Texas State, you can find application materials to the Ph.D. program here.

Last update: November 2009
Office phone number : (512) 245-8846
E-mail : zhan@txstate.edu

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